Tuesday, April 16

Google Neighbourly Rolls Out in Five More Indian Cities

The local information app Neighbourly which was launched by Google recently has reportedly expanded to five more Indian cities including Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Mysore, Vizag and Kota.

The app, which helps users with local information like nearby shopping arcades, parks, fitness, food and tuition centres, was launched by Google in beta in May and is now available in seven cities.

“With ‘Neighbourly’, we are able to address the local information needs of India’s fast-growing internet users in their neighbourhood,” said Josh Woodward, Group Product Manager, Next Billion Users team, Google.

The improved version of the app has higher quality voice input, thus, enabling people to ask and respond to questions in their own languages and quicker replies. Also, it has “similar answers” feature that detects and groups similar answers.

“The app was first rolled out to Mumbai and Jaipur and 20% of people tap to speak their question and each question, spoken or written, gets an average of four relevant, trusted answers,” Google said. The company also stated that users in Mumbai and Jaipur have sought answers to questions around local shopping, food recommendations and tuition centres.